American Boosts Offer To Pilots

LABOR

American Airlines sweetened an offer to its pilots union over merging with Reno Air, as a federal judge prepares today to fine the union for its 11-day sickout in the merger dispute.

The moves came as American's operations returned to normal, and the Allied Pilots Association representing American's 9,200 pilots said members were back in the cockpit "in full force."

American said it offered late Monday to boost salaries for Reno pilots by up to 56 percent immediately and to shorten the time for training and merging the two pilot groups.

But the union wants even bigger raises and a faster merger, so American's pilots won't be displaced by Reno's lower-paid pilots and can move more quickly up the seniority ranks.

As talks took place in Dallas, American reported some 56 flights canceled Tuesday, with 23 of those scrapped because of sick pilots. That's down from almost 300 scrubbed Monday and more than 1,000 a day at the peak of the protest before the holiday weekend.

Just one flight was canceled from Miami International Airport and one from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport because of the sickout, said spokeswoman Martha Pantin in Miami.

For today, American expects only seven of its average 2,250 daily flights to be canceled.

But outside the airports, problems remain far from resolved.

On Tuesday, the pilots union and its two top officers handed over more than $10 million -- or about one-fourth of the union strike fund -- as a down payment on fines for disavowing a judge's Feb. 10 ruling to return to work.

U.S. District Court Judge Joe Kendall in Dallas will assess fines today based on how much American lost from the sickout. Wall Street analysts put the tally up to $90 million, based on about 6,000 flights canceled that affected more than 500,000 people.

At the heart of the dispute is merging seniority lists with Reno, the tiny carrier that American bought in December.

That's important because seniority determines not just pilot salary but also "who flies what planes, who lives where, when you work and what types of trips you take," said Bob Flocke, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), which represents 51 airlines in North America, including Reno.

"Seniority is everything in the pilot business. When you sign on, you get your place in the career queue," Flocke said.

Setting the pecking order has a long, contentious history.

"Wilbur and Orville argued over seniority at Kitty Hawk," joked aviation consultant Mike Boyd of The Boyd Group of Evergreen, Colo., who has served as an adviser to American's union.

At Reno, a pilot with five years at the airline can reach the rank of captain. At far larger American, it may take a pilot 10 years to reach that status. If Reno's staff merged with American at their current ranks, it would seem a slap in the face to American's crews who had been climbing the ladder longer, Boyd said.

Plus, it wants all pay scales to take effect immediately, so that American pilots won't be undercut and also, can get raises now as they move up the ranks.

Reno's senior captains make less than half of the average $136,000 a year salary earned by American pilots.

The seniority question has proved so messy in the past that mediators often are called in, and negotiations can take months -- if not years.

When Pan Am bought National Airlines in the 1970s, arbitration over merging seniority lists took four years. Plus, it took three more years to settle some kinks in the process, said Barbara Beyer, an aviation consultant at Avmark Inc. of Arlington, Va., who represented Pan Am flight engineers during those talks.

"For a consultant, it was an absolute annuity," said Beyer.

What could American have done to avoid the mess?

Boyd said it could have opted not to buy Reno and expanded on its own.

"Merging seniority lists is like dealing with toxic waste. Everyone gets splattered and burned," he said.

Or else, American might have done what Delta Air Lines did in buying Atlantic Southeast, opting to operate the smaller airline as a separate subsidiary.

What's especially tough in American's case is bad blood between management and labor, fostered during years of heavy-handed tactics by former airline chief Robert Crandall and apparent in a brief pilots strike in 1997.

"You may have this kind of problem at other airlines, but it might not be as confrontational. Other airlines have better communication between management and the troops," Beyer said.

Especially militant, consultants say, are those American pilots based in Miami.

The reason: Many of the pilots came from the former Eastern Airlines, where labor relations were terrible and contributed to the carrier's demise. "Those pilots are far more distrustful of management," said Beyer.

Plus, pilots in the Miami hub tend to have less seniority than those in other bases, such as American's headquarters in Dallas/Fort Worth. So they are more likely to be displaced on the seniority rankings from mergers or furloughs.